Recent reviews by Rafael De Jongh

Introduction

The new rebooted Prey game has been out for a little while now, and I sure had a very great time playing this game for the 16 hours I've gone through it.

Prey first took my attention since last year's Gamescom 2016, where I actually saw the first introduction trailer of Prey. The glimpse that they showed us, was so impressive for me that I really had to play this game once it was out.

One thing is sure, if you'd ask me which game you could compare Prey to, then I would say this would be a combination of Death space and Bioshock.

The general jump scares with the eerie space station setting, with a rather old-modern atmosphere, really gave it a rather unique setting for me.

Especially the way they started the game's setting was for me very interesting, it almost felt that I was another test subject in Aperture Science, but boy that sure changed quite drastically after the whole introduction.

Without going too much in depth to prevent spoiler, I do must say that the way Arkane Studios handled the whole introduction, was totally amazing, and was completely different than what I was expecting it to be.

As some who played the first Prey, will notice that there is absolutely no references or relation to the original Prey, and for that I do think it was a smart decision to give this game a whole new start.

While it might have been also nice to have a sequel, I sure loved the direction they went with this reboot.


Story

You play as Morgan Yu on the "Talos I" space station. Here you witness a quarantine outbreak of the alien species the Typhon.

The unknown aliens spread over the whole space station and you are the one that will have to stop them, not only for Talos I, but also from Earth!

These alien creatures have various ways to harm the humans aboard Talos I, where a terrible faith is guaranteed when facing such monsters.

In the whole story, you have a range of decisions to make, to what you would do to obtain your goals.

These decisions also change the outcome of the story and the reactions of the NPC's that you will meet down the line.

The one thing I do can say is that the overall storyline does come to one finish in the end. Which may or may not be actually a nice thing, as I personally did not really liked the overall resolve of the ending.

The overall ending of this game was actually rather disappointed for me. I experienced four different endings, which seemed to be all pretty much all concluded in the same thing.

Here I was expecting a bit more of a change with all the actions I took through the story but in general it wasn't all too bad either.

In the end it took me around 10 hours to complete the main quests and six for the side quests. Which for a type of game like this, is actually very lovely.

I first though this game would have been max 10 hours or so, but if you really took your time with everything, you pretty much could reach an overall time of 20 hours!


Gameplay

The overall gameplay is actually very well done, it is well balanced between the various difficulties, and the weapons/abilities you receive.

As the player you really get a very lovely range of weapons and abilities which can be used to kill your enemies in various methods.

From silenced pistols, all the way to special grenades that turn every material into their ground properties.

The whole arsenal was just great to use and play with. Even though I mostly used my Golden Silenced Pistol and Shotgun, changing from time to time to another weapon like the Gloo Gun or Laser Pistol, sure was a fun way to destroy Typhon's with.


Neuromods

Through the whole story and your survival on the space station, you learn a lot of new abilities which can assist you in archiving your goal. Not only can you obtain human, but also alien abilities.

Some of the funniest ability was the shape shifting ability, which you learn after scanning the Mimic Typhon.

With this power you could change in almost any item on the space station, which made you experience the environment in various new ways, and find access to new rooms that wouldn't be able to be accessed normally.

Suit & Scanner Upgrades
Besides gaining new abilities you can also upgrade your Suit and Scanner, which will also grant you additional boosts like extra jumping power or scanning range.

I rather liked the whole ability to customize your layout of your armor and suit, especially loved the Treasure Hunt side quest, where you really had to do a treasure hunt to get a special Armor Mod!


Loading

But if there was anything I rather dislike about this game, then it would be the rather long and annoying double loading screens.

The actual overall size of the game's maps aren't that big, so in these years standards and the power of the actual engine, they would have normally made it completely open that every section is freely accessible without any loading screens.

First you would be shown a map loading screen, which was fairly fast in general:


After that you would then be greeted with another loading screen, assuming this would be to load all the textures on the level:

These loading screens really annoyed me, especially as later in the game, you sometimes have to go from the bottom of the Space Station all the way to the Control Bridge.

Which would be around 5 loading screens apart, and those loading screens almost took longer than actually traveling there.


Crash To Desktop

A sad thing I experienced with a quest late in game where I need to go meet someone in the Neuromod Division which would end in a Crash To Desktop.

I waited for a patch release so I could actually finish that route of the game which is one of the endings.

As of writing this review, the latest 1.03 beta patch actually resolved this problem for me, which made it possible to actually also finish this route of the story.


Zero-G

The best gameplay mechanic I personally loved was the Zero-G environments, where you could easily go outside the space station and explore the exterior.

The whole movement from how you would fly through space just felt completely normal and easy to learn.

The space travels between the various sections of the space stations where probably my favorite.


Graphics

The graphics of this game are more to the toony style rather than the realistic style. But this does give the game an interesting feel, somewhat like Bioshock.

What really did amaze me is how well this game was optimized for being made on CryEngine. Which is for many a very highly resourced engine.

So even with the rather toony and unique styled textures, they really did a great job on the whole environment, to get that aesthetic over.

Various levels, where beautifully detailed, with great varieties of assets, which really resembled what they should.

Both the interior and exterior ware greatly detailed, and optimized making it in general a hell of a great looking game!


Overall

All in all I can say that I really enjoyed these 16 hours of gameplay in this very unique sci-fi setting.

If you did not play this game yourself and you're doubting, , then I really suggest you to give this game a try!

For me this game really deserves a solid 8.5 out of 10!

Who wasn't excited when Bethesda and id Software announced an upcoming DOOM? Well I for one was really hyped for it, especially with the various glimpses and teasers they showed us how demonically awesome it was going to be!

The first look however was completely different than what some might have been expecting, this comparing to the previous title "Doom 3". 

I do like these various changes that were made, which makes this Doom truer to the original fast action paced first games of Doom. 

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The story sure brings me back to Doom 3. Mars is overrun again with uncountable demons from Hell and you're the only one who can stop them and save Mars. 

But to that part, there was a lot more than just shoot and kill to this game than I first thought. 

The actual story development and build-up towards the ending was pretty properly put in place so the player had a great balance between story progression and actual intense game play. 

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While the overall story is very linear, I do prefer it this way rather than a non linear storyline for a fast action shooter game like Doom. 

The whole story of this Doom is pretty solid especially towards the ending when every piece fell together properly! 

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The players whole journey to Hell and back sure gives a lot of different environments to battle in, which requires the player to also adapt to different playing styles to defeat their opponents. 

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The gradual increase of difficulty together with the various amounts of weapons and upgrades you find along your path are definitely a great way to train the player for the various bosses and difficult enemies they'll face!

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Together with the weapon upgrades you also had 12 Rune Trials, which granted you specific power upgrades. With completing one of these short but quite fun trials you would receive one of these runes, that grants you extra powers that could help you along your path through Hell.

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Besides the awesome gameplay I really enjoyed that they put in a big amount of secrets in each level, which for me really added to the gameplay experience and also the fun factor! 

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From finding little toy soldiers to finding old DOOM levels and Skyrim references, it was a really nice surprise and also very tempting to find every secret along the way!

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The Bethesda influence is great in this one! But boy was this reference a nice surprise to discover!

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I especially liked that they included these Classic Doom maps where you could find other secrets or bonuses which was a really lovely addition to the whole secret hunting.

There are probably a lot more secrets that I've missed or reference to earlier games/series, but this was a great addition to the whole gameplay I must say.



Most of us can agree that the graphic fidelity of this game was pretty spot on for a modern First Person Shooter! And as a texture artist myself, I sure loved the style they went with, while not being overly realistic but still staying in right tune of Sci-Fi, just the way I like it! 

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The whole other side, being in Hell sure changes the whole environment, but really makes it a nice addition to the different kind of environments. 

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Especially the weapons were fantastic, the dedicated team behind the weapon models sure knew what they were doing! 

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With the great amount of quality the only downside is that even a GTX 860m in SLI didn't manage to get a solid frame rate without lowering the settings and resolution. Yet I still managed to find a proper sweet spot for this game to run smoothly in even highly intense fighting situations! 

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From the 10 hours I've played the single player story mode, I was completely overwhelmed by the intense moments and magnificent gameplay. 

Not only did I first thought it was going to be a more generic shooter to attract the more casual gamers. Well, I sure was wrong on that side and it turned out to be a very great and still a fantastic DOOM game!

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Story: 8.5
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 9
Fun Factor: 8.5
Overall: 8.8

This sure blew my mind in terms of quality, mods like these sure are lovely to see how even a small team could present you with such a beautiful and great experience! The puzzles were quite challenging compared to the original and I really liked that as in the original Portal series they tended to be rather easy. The whole story also had a very proper buildup towards the end together with strong graphics and great visual effects.

All in all I really enjoyed playing this Mod!

After a good 16 hours of gameplay I can say that I quite enjoyed the whole ride so therefore this review about Dying Light.

While I'm not a huge fan of Zombie Games at all, I actually quite dislike them as they tend to be quite repetitive. I must say that I did enjoy Dying Light, with having the open world experience in a good combination of the story mode and the various side missions.

That said let's get into more details regarding the game itself.

The Story
=========

The story was decent, while very linear and pretty expected, it was still pretty lovely to go through. The ending however was quite disappointing however as it just felt a bit too open. I know this was done intentionally so you could still room the map to hack and slash your way through zombies and finish side missions but the story didn't felt right to stop there or at least not the way they did it.

In general it was still pretty enjoyable, however I did enjoy doing the various side missions more than the actual story as they just felt more challenging and not too expected of what you required to do.

All in all the story mode and side missions did gave you plenty to do that for me filled up a good 16 hours of gameplay!

The Gameplay
============

While I still dislike zombie games I did play a wide variety of them (including various zombie mods) I must say that the overall gameplay of Dying Light was quite to my liking.

On the counterpart of Dead Island which didn't spiked my interest at all, I tried both Dead Island 1 and Riptide but they just weren't to my liking. Perhaps I must give them another try and see how I experience it this time after now playing Dying Light, it's also perhaps good for the upcoming Dead Island 2!

The only main thing that really bothered me was that the weapons you used would break only after like 50 hits, which isn't that realistic. Okay an old rusted pipe might break or so but a brand new katana I do think those can go with you a couple years without bending if used correctly.

That together with the very limited choice of firearms, the only weapons types I found were a handgun, a rifle and a shotgun. The fact that there's a lack of a sniper rifle really bothered me for long range takedowns and the huge lack of silenced addons or weapons in general.

While you can add additional stuff to melee weapons you can't to weapons nor upgrade them in anyway, so it would've been great if you would also be able to upgrade/customize the weapons of adding stuff like: silencers, scopes, extra magazines, less recoil, etc...

That aside I must say that the overall gameplay of Dying Light is very solid and quite fun!

The Quality
===========

I was actually quite surprised by the quality of the game and not that alone but the smoothness and optimisation of it as well.

The textures and models were pretty lovely and together with the great detailed world you play in sure made a great zombie slashing experience.

Various things did bother me like too many models using mirrored textures (like elevator doors, pipes, pillars, etc...).

That if you have a bloody weapon and you into the water or it's heavily raining that the blood is still on it.

The (night) skybox compression that tend to give off all the green artifacts which really did bother me on various occasions.

And the overall model repetition, but that's just nitpicking for an open world game after all.

But in general I was still surprised from the quality of this game, really great quality textures and models and all greatly optimised!

Overall
=======

In the end I quite liked Dying Light, while I'm still not a too huge fan of Zombie Games, this game sure gave my some interest to give the Dead Island series and some other Zombie games another try.

In general a great game and for that I give it a solid 9/10!

So I've just finished Sleeping Dogs after a good 15 hours of gameplay I must say that I quite enjoyed this Chinese GTA.
The first impressions were great and as I did wanted to buy it when it just got released but didn't had the chance to, to then later being able to buy it in a humble bundle I sure was thrilled to play it.

The story itself was pretty decent, while linear it had still some really nice action packed parts and the ending was okay, I did expect something bigger than that but in general it was pretty decent to wrap things up and still have an open-like ending to be able to continue where you left off.

The game mechanics also focus more on hand to hand combat rather than focusing on guns which was quite lovely in its own way, there were only a couple of times where a gun would've been quite handy but other than that some really kick ass fighting was the way to go!

The game itself looks pretty lovely, running the game on max with the HQ texture pack installed sure made it look really awesome, however on some parts (especially shader wise of the weapons and characters) it did felt a bit lacking or at least those were compressed and at time (when it's raining for example) you could really see the compression artifacts so that was a bit less but not that much of a bother.

So all in all I quite enjoyed this game, it's been a long time till I've played something this long and actually enjoyed every part of it. So I must say that this game was pretty damn good!

Overall Score 8.8/10

I recently finished Shadow Warrior as it went on sale a couple weeks ago and as I was already highly interested in the game by the humoristic moments they showed in the trailers I decided to finally get it.

Now having finished the game I was quite impressed by the amount of quality they managed to put into it, while the game is pretty linear it does provide you with a pretty lovely and rather comedic story combined with some great action from slashing demon with your katana or just blasting their heads off with an a four barrel shotgun.

The graphics of the game were also quite nice to look at, not to say they were the best but there were moments that I was baffled by the quality of the beautiful scenery that made me even stand still and just look around to then kill a couple more waves of demons.

The gameplay was pretty fast paced with enough breathing room in between to prepare yourself for the next battle or for more story development.

In general the gameplay was quite good and I really liked the comedy factor brought into the story, together with that the story was pretty properly buildup and combined with really great action I have to say that I really did enjoy playing this game.

All in all this game sure was fun to play!


Overall Score: 9/10

The first impression was pretty nice, it did have a closer feel to the Far Cry we all love being the first, while still not as epic as the first it did feel more closely to the actual Far Cry series but like most games it felt a lot more casual which was one thing that did bother me throughout the whole game but oh well that aside the start was pretty good.

The main storyline of the game is pretty nice packed has a nice spread of different characters you come in contact with and so you'll explore the whole island to your final goal which is killing the guy who's behind every problem you're facing from the start of the game.

The storyline is mostly divided in two parts which is also divided by the two islands in the whole map that on its turn make the enemies and challenges harder though the main goal stays the same and that's killing the main evil boss behind everyones misfortune.

I've did a lot of side stories and free roaming as I actually like doing that in my playthrough, so it took me around 18 hours to complete the storyline but with that I got all my skills filled, craftables crafted, own every weapon/extensions/paints and well pretty much everything is done next to the main story line.

The ending was pretty casual and actually quite expected in a way but it did made the overall story of Far Cry 3 pretty decent and I must say I prefered this storyline and atmosphere a lot more than from Far Cry 2 so that sure was a plus!

Overall it was a decent game, it could have be more challenging in a way or be more unique but well that's hard these days for a game to be really unique, but well I did enjoyed playing through this game!

Final Score 7/10

FTL: Faster Than Light

On first sight this looks like a pretty boring game, but infact it's really amusing and a very addicting game.

The whole purpose of this game is to travel through different galaxy's and running away from the Rebels, in between finding new weapons, upgrading your ship, helping out planets in distress and even stranded spaceships, but don't forget also defending yourself from rebel scouts, pirates, slave traders and so much more danger!

This all to get you to the end goal where you need to destroy the main fleet from the Rebels!

All by all this game is very interesting and it really got me hooked to get better weapons, better ships and eventually destroy the main fleet!
A pretty nice and well developed indie game that's definitely recommended!

Overall Score: 7/10

Just a great game to spend some good hours on definitely recommended !